Global Shifts - Just Transitions

The lack of ambition on climate change has the world heading towards more than 3.5 degrees above current temperatures. With the IPCC prediction that there is just a decade to stop this trend, then ambition is critical. Just Transition is the pathway to high ambition. Unions must be at the table at all levels to negotiate the Just Transition measures required to ensure trust in the necessary shifts in energy, and in technological advances to ensure both mitigation and adaptation across all industries and sectors.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide an opportunity to advance goals that are critical to the labour movement.

Technology can provide opportunity, but it will also disrupt jobs and current supply chains. Digitalisation, automation and data all need to be managed to protect jobs and living standards. Full employment remains a goal of the union movement and no compromise will be accepted on the Universal Labour Guarantee. Just Transition measures are vital to realise these shifts.

The ITUC’s Global Shifts – Just Transitions pillar is broken down into two thematic areas: Climate, Future of Work.

We have just a decade left to stabilise the climate crisis and just one year for governments to raise their commitments in the form of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to meet this test, warned trade unions at the opening of COP25 in Madrid.

The government of Chile has announced that it will not host two major international summits as it faces mounting pressure from mass anti-austerity protests. The government finally yielded to calls for the November APEC trade summit and the UN’s December COP25 climate conference to be cancelled as the international community responded in shock at the brutal repression of protestors.